Chapter Text
Carson Shaw had an unusual hobby. A hobby that she’d fallen into kind of accidentally. A hobby that had turned into a consuming passion. And subsequently a career. Of sorts.
Carson Shaw collected postcards. Specifically postcards of pin up girls. And her particular niche was Second World War era cards.
Today she was at an estate sale, combing through the belongings of a recently deceased ninety-three year old lady in search of hidden treasure. So far she’d unearthed some baseball cards and other early 1940s memorabilia, but no joy on the pin up girls front. She persevered, moving onto the bookshelves when the random boxes of papers and miscellanea were exhausted. Her friends told her she was ghoulish, spending hours digging through the left-over detritus of people’s lives. But Carson had unearthed enough nuggets in her time that she was able to ignore them.
She was acting on a hunch today. She’d been staying in Peoria when she’d heard about this open house estate sale. One of her researcher buddies sent her a text with the details from a local newspaper. She had been planning to spend some time in the local library archives, but instead… She’d packed up her camper truck and rolled into Rockford.
Carson was hoping for a score today. She’d been lucky in this part of Illinois before. She knew enough about the region’s history to be familiar with the women’s baseball league. She’d driven by the sign that still stood at the outskirts of Rockford, announcing that the Rockford Peaches had won the championships of the All American Girls Professional Baseball League four times.
Also knew that where women played sports together, they were more likely to sleep together. And it was always… always… the lesbians who kept things. Kept their baseball cards, their photos. And their naughty postcards.
From all accounts this particular old lady had been married to a man for fifty something years. But it wouldn’t be the first time that Carson found things that people didn’t expect. Things that their families were shocked to discover. Things that they were only too happy to let Carson take off their hands with a minimum of fuss (or money either).
Carson perused the bookshelves carefully, eyes glossing over modern titles. She hunted for oddities and antiquities, and she’d almost given up when she spotted something that didn’t seem right. As she’d looked through the books and knick-knacks, Carson had come to the conclusion that this lady, and her family, didn’t read a great deal. There were bestsellers from the last several decades present on the shelves, but they looked almost entirely pristine. Barely a cracked or even creased spine amongst the lot.
However…
On the second shelf from the bottom, on the bookshelf closest to the wall… the books looked well handled. Like they’d felt the touch of a hand a time or two (or a hundred).
Squatting on the floor, Carson carefully levered the most well-loved looking books out of their places, flipping them to check the covers. One a mass-market copy of Pride and Prejudice with a spectacularly ugly cover. The other an early copy of To Kill a Mockingbird.
Carson looked closely at that one, checking to see if it might be a first edition. She was here to look for pin up girls, but if other lucrative items fell in her path she certainly wasn’t going to let them go. Historical research paid peanuts, and she needed to make ends meet while she finished up her dissertation.
Alas, it was an early edition, but not a first.
Carson fanned through the pages of both texts, keen to find out if anything was slipped between the pages. Nothing dropped out of either book, and she felt a pang of disappointment. She’d been so sure about this place today.
As she sat back on her heels something caught her eye in the gap that the two books had left on the shelf. There was a book behind the others, placed with the cover facing the back wall.
Carson dislodged a few other books around it, and then reached through to grab it.
Given that it was buried behind a stack of other books, most of which were predictably dusty, this one… was surprisingly dust free.
Carson flipped it over to find a copy of The Price of Salt. Patricia Highsmith.
“Bingo.”
The book looked well worn, and the pages were thick from being thumbed through repeatedly. As Carson started to flip through the pages herself, she realised the pages weren’t thickened due to age and use. The book was unusually fat due to the volume of other material that was inserted between the pages.
“Fuck yeah!”
Barely breathing, Carson picked a section at random. Carefully pressed the pages apart to reveal a baseball card. She almost groaned in disappointment until she took a good look at the card.
A solid looking woman stared back at her, baseball bat slung over one shoulder. The other arm raised in a muscle pose, highlighting impressive biceps. The text at the top of the card read All American Girls Professional Baseball League 1943. And at the bottom, Rockford Peaches. Jo “the Bazooka” De Luca.
Vindicated, Carson kept searching through the book. More baseball cards fell out, from the AAGPBL, and also the National Girls Baseball League. Some of them were autographed. Carson felt her chest tighten, knew that she could make some money out of this if she played things right.
She hated that she needed to hustle like this, but she had to make ends meet somehow. She got a miserably tiny stipend from the university for her research, but it was nowhere near enough to live on. She’d saved a lot of money for herself living quietly at home while Charlie was away on deployment, but she’d blown most of it on the camper truck. And now… she needed to get by as best she could.
The ball cards kept coming, until Carson had a sizeable playing card sized deck in front of her. Maybe thirty to forty percent of them were autographed. Whoever the old lady was, she’d been a big ball fan in the day. She must have hung around the stadium dozens, or even hundreds, of times to collect this many autographs over the years.
She kept thumbing through the pages, until she came across something that was not baseball cards. Something bigger, that fit snugly into the pages of the novel.
She hit paydirt.
Holding her breath, Carson slid a black and white postcard out from between two pages. Stared down in glee at the perfectly preserved image of a sultry Marlene Dietrich, flipping the card over to confirm the date. 1941.
“Yes!”
There were a number of other cards secreted in the confines of The Price of Salt, and Carson’s excitement grew at each discovery. There was a luminous Vivienne Leigh, less pin up girl and more glamour shot. Likewise a stunning shot of Lucille Ball, in a sequined gown and the most serene expression. Three Katherine Hepburns, all different images. And a Ginger Rogers image that Carson had never seen before, in black lacy lingerie.
All but one of these cards were dated between 1939 and 1945 - to find a couple would have made the trip worth it, but to get so many… including one she’d never seen before. This was an incredible haul.
Carson felt the grin stretching her face, ecstatic with her discoveries. Started to tuck the cards back into their homes when she noticed still more additions at the very end of the book.
Slid from her knees to her butt as she gently prised a photo out of the back pages. It wasn’t a pin up shot by any means. Instead, a pair of women dressed in pants, shirts, and caps stood with their arms slung around each other’s shoulders, grinning at the camera like they’d just heard the best joke in the world. One of the women had long blonde hair pulled back into a braid, a cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth. The other was darker, Latinex looking, gesturing with her free hand.
Carson flipped the photo over. Saw neat print in the bottom corner. Lupe and Jess, 1944.
She set the photo down carefully, turning pages until she encountered another.
Couldn’t help smiling down at the saucy expression of the blonde woman, wearing a satiny robe with the fluffy edges that were so common a feature of movies at the time, complete with those ridiculous fluffy slipper heels. The inscription on this one read Maybelle, 1943.
There were a couple of others. Maybelle apparently liked to pose for photos, as she appeared in two more, neither of them as risque as the original. In one she posed with a severe looking brunette, her hair in two braids. Her expression fierce. Her name was Shirley according to the script on the reverse.
Carson continued to flip through the book carefully, disappointed to have come to the end of her discovery. Was about to start packing up her haul when one last photo caught her eye. Tucked into the second last page of the book.
Her heart skipped a beat as she picked it up.
A glamorous goddess stared back at her. Her hair curled to perfection, her lips the shade that you just know was heart-stopping red, even though the photograph was black and white. She sat on the arm of a recliner, legs crossed, one arm resting on the back of the chair. Her body tilted away from the camera, so that she needed to look back over her shoulder somewhat to meet the camera lens. She was dressed in a skirt and blouse, the top buttons undone to just this side of scandalous. Her eyes serious, despite the smirk that lingered around those lips.
Carson just sat and looked. And looked.
There was something familiar about the woman, something that tickled in the back of her mind.
And it wasn’t just that she was the most beautiful woman that Carson had ever seen in her life.
Loathe to look away, Carson finally brought herself to turn the photo over. Read the inscription before returning to the image. A name to go with the face.
Greta, 1943.